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500 Institutions Deploy WMS for Video Streaming

By Dian Schaffhauser

01/06/10

Wowza Media Systems said 500 universities and colleges have adopted its Wowza Media Server to deliver live, on demand, and interactive content to students and faculty, much of it driven by greater demand for lecture capture. Among Wowza clients are the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.

"Universities are discovering that lecture capture is a competitive advantage and of great benefit to 'millennial' learners, who are accustomed to convenience and to on-demand access to myriad content sources," said Alan Greenberg, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research. "The beauty of streaming and lecture capture today is that they are more affordable than ever before."

The University of New South Wales found the Wowza servers to be much more cost effective and easier to maintain than its separate legacy QuickTime and Windows streaming servers, which the university is now planning to retire. "With Wowza Media Server 2 we are able to consolidate our media resources onto a single platform, while also opening the door to new campus IPTV and iPhone streaming capabilities for our UNSWTV and lecture recording services," said Patrick Stoddart, manager of Web and innovation. "The multi-client reach and flexibility of the Wowza server has made it an essential technology component underpinning our online media strategy."

The University of Sussex has deployed Wowza media servers to expand learning options for its 10,000 students. "Our first deployment of the Wowza streaming technology was instrumental in powering our Live TV Production course last year," said Phil Watten, media technology manager for the School of Informatics. "That was an ideal proving ground for Wowza, and we have since begun to roll it out across a number of other university courses to deliver televised lectures to Flash desktop players and soon to unify our iPhone delivery."

Media delivery using Wowza technology works on multiple players and devices, including Adobe Flash and the Apple iPhone, Microsoft Silverlight, Apple QuickTime, and IPTV set-top boxes.

The company is located in Evergreen, CO and San Jose, CA.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal and Campus Technology. She can be reached at dian@dischaffhauser.com or on Twitter @schaffhauser.